"Limits to the Legitimacy Function of EU Citizenship: The Nationality of Member States"

Abstract

The creation of the citizenship of the Union was rooted in an effort to increase democratic legitimacy and, in the work of some authors, there seems to be an implicit agreement that the common practice of citizenship rights could become the basis for the development of a positive solidarity that might generate an independent source of legitimacy for the EU. This paper explores whether the citizenship of the Union may become an autonomous source for Union legitimacy by focusing on two issues. Firstly, it seems that some Union citizenship rights, particularly the rights to freely move and reside within the EU, do establish legitimacy basis for the EU. That is, the praxis of such rights may create a substrata of acceptance of European Union. Political rights, though, are the essential citizenship rights; therefore it is necessary to determine to which extent the political participation afforded by EU citizenship establishes a legitimacy channel autonomous from nationality. On the catalogue of rights included by the Treaty on European Union, the legitimacy deficit in the concept and implementing elements of political rights created by their reliance on nationality will be examined (ID. Secondly, the difficulties to develop social rights or redistributive entitlements, on the other hand, mean that citizenship of the Union will not substitute the individuals perception of material belonging around nationality (IIl). In either case, it seems evident that the traditional attachment of citizenship (as a status of rights) to the idea of nation provides legitimacy grounds for the development of certain rights which constitute the essence of citizenship. If citizenship is built up as a set of rights without no reference to the community identity contained in the idea of nationality, there will be a lack of legitimacy to include certain rights. Anticipating the conclusion (IV), a concept of citizenship that goes further than the mere harmonization of certain secondary political rights seems to require the previous development of forms of pan-Union identity if it is to avoid legitimacy deficits. The reasoning will commence establishing a conceptual difference between citizenship and nation as two different ways of relating individuals to public power in their legitimacy function (I).